The licenses were issued after Robin Li, the boss of China's biggest search engine Baidu, tested his firm's driverless car on Beijing's roads in July, stirring controversy as there were no rules for such a test, the agency said.

COGNITIVE TECHNOLOGIES such as computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing use artificial intelligence to perform tasks that only humans could do previously. However, it's a technology that's often misunderstood by businesses who struggle to evaluate the risks of the technology against the ways in which it can benefit them. L&T Technology Services, for example, has recently announced AiKno, a cognitive intelligence framework it developed. AiKno combines contextual intelligence and AI, to help customers develop a range of digital virtual agents, problem-solving applications, and robotic process automations – and gets better with time as it learns from your data. Currently, L&T is working on integrating AiKno into a range of solutions that have been deployed in smart factories, smart machines, and serve as building blocks for smart cities. Here are some myths about cognitive technology that we'll dispel so you can get to grips with the technology and explore bold new applications for your business: It's true that a lot can be automated with the help of AI, but it's not necessarily something organizations want to do.

Ayasdi offers an enterprise-grade artificial intelligence platform that leverages big data to make intelligent business applications; for instance, Ayasdi has an application that powers parts of HSBC's anti-money laundering technology stack. Headquartered in California, Ayasdi has further offices in London with global expansion demanding a third office potentially coming to Singapore for 2018. Lots of stuff is going on with AI. Broadly speaking there are two major ways of thinking about problems addressable by AI today. One side is around perception based problems – self driving cars and virtual assistants – these rely on data such as imaging and sensing the environment.

YouTube's new moderation team appears to have mistakenly removed a number of right-wing political channels from the site. The video-streaming giant - owned, like Google, by Alphabet - is currently stepping up its efforts to remove offensive content as the US gun control debate heats up following the Florida high school massacre on 14 February in which ex-student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people with an AR-15 assault rifle. Over 10,000 new staff were hired in December as the company sought to address fake news and inappropriate clips being uploaded, following criticism of its hosting contentious material without challenge. However, YouTube appears to have encountered teething problems with its new censorship body. Pulling accounts entirely would have marked a major policy change for YouTube - one that it has not publicly announced.

Former Google chief Eric Schmidt believes AI technology is developing so quickly it may soon turn against its human masters. The billionaire tech leader claims Terminator-like AI movie death scenarios are'one to two decades away' but says we should only'worry about them in a while'. Many AI experts, including Elon Musk, have said we should be wary of a potential AI uprising. Schmidt himself has previously expressed concern about what countries such as Russia and China will do with AI weapons. Terminator-style AI takeovers could be happening within'one to two decades', according to ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

When we consider quite how far medicine has developed worldwide in the past century, it could be easy to become complacent and assume that we have advanced our treatment methods and capabilities as far as possible. However, a 2016 study revealed some quite shocking statistics regarding healthcare mistakes; namely, that 250,000 US citizens were killed every year from medical errors, such as misdiagnosis or incorrect dosage administration by healthcare professionals. This technically puts it at the third largest killer in the US, behind heart disease and cancer. Estimates of the economic costs of these mistakes reach up to $20.8 bln annually. With human error being one of the main causes of medical mistakes, the healthcare industry is now able to turn to artificial intelligence (AI) for help.

Chinese e-commerce stalwart Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has founded its first overseas research institute in partnership with Singapore's Nanyang Technological University as the pair look to explore practical real-life solutions for artificial intelligence. The duo penned a memorandum of understanding and pooled 50 researchers from their staff rosters to carry out studies, Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported. Alibaba announced its USD15-billion research program, the DAMO Academy (Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook) last year, with plans to set up labs in the US, Russia, Israel and Singapore and to study disruptive technologies, such as Big Data, the Internet of Things and man-machine interaction. Chief Technical Officer Jeff Zhang confirmed the new lab is part of the strategy. The two parties will study the applications of artificial intelligence across a range of sectors over the next five years, including retail, urban transport, hospitals and nursing homes, and residential communities.

Across industries that have been gold mines for AI investments are automated threat intelligence, automated customer services agent and fraud detection. As per Jessica Goepfert, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC "Near-term opportunities for cognitive systems are in industries such as banking, securities and investments, and manufacturing….In these segments, we find a wealth of unstructured data, a desire to harness insights from this information, and an openness to innovative technologies". Fintech has witnessed a staggering growth in investments world over, with the growth of over 10% to a whopping $23.2 billion- US and China leading the market. This boost is powered by growing capabilities of AI and machine learning. As AI has already achieved much in retail, healthcare, trading etc. – it is safe to say that AI will achieve great things in Finance.

And through all those millennia, farmers have literally battled the elements. They have read the seasons and bred new crop types largely through trial and error. By the late 20th century we had increased food production with mechanization, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, irrigation and a lot more. Today, humankind is growing more food than ever. But, here's a crucial question: How long can we keep farming like this? "The planet's population is growing, and the amount of arable land is diminishing. There are threats from climate change and pressure on resources, like water," he explains.

Thailand's Digital Economy Promotion Agency and the World Bank have agreed to jointly undertake activities to promote awareness of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Thailand and drive digital transformation in public and private sectors. The announcement was made during a seminar attended by over 150 representatives from the Thai government, international organisations, businesses, NGOs and the media, for the local launch the recent World Bank report, The Internet of Things: The New Government-to-Business Platform. The report examine the progress made by governments incorporating IoT within their functions – many governments are eager to use IoT to better serve people, despite the obstacles of taking initiatives beyond the pilot stage. Prasanna Lal Das, lead author of the report, said that IoT has significant potential, but it requires systematic, informed work by the government, private sector, and civil society. Opportunities that will be created by the development of the IoT and ways to make the Internet of Things work in Thailand were discussed at the seminar jointly organised by DEPA and the World Bank.